


In the Stream

by musamihi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Divination, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 18:44:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3082166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Draco finds he has at least one saleable skill, and takes up as a Seer.  Harry has a question, and Draco has a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Stream

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the H/D Career Fair 2009. Thanks to merlinsbeardx for beta-reading!

_Monday, January 14th, 2002._

"You should have made an appointment," he said, sending the great bronze basin floating to the hearth with a steady arc of his wand. It left a watery red ring pooled on the varnish of the desk. "I haven't had a chance to clean up."

Harry's stomach gave a little flip as the basin emptied its slithery-looking contents into the fire with a hiss and crackle, filling the spacious office with a smell disturbingly similar to bacon. "Are those - ?"

"Intestines, yes." Draco Malfoy dropped himself into his seat on the far side of the desk, a broad, dark, uncluttered slab of wood, and began impatiently cleaning the mess of blood and - whatever else a bowl of insides left in its wake. "Bird entrails are all nonsense, you know," he said, as Harry took his seat, leaving a sizable buffer between himself and the splashings. "But some people like the flash."

"Really." The word came out flat. If flash were at all in demand, he couldn't imagine Malfoy was doing a very brisk business - Harry felt as though he were visiting a solicitor, not a Seer. Not even the afternoon sun, doing its utmost to sneak in through the tall, north-facing window, could enliven the grey, undecorated walls; the high ceilings and ruthlessly polished floor gave every sound a sterile sort of echo. There was a filing cabinet stationed squarely to one side of the desk, and the only other pieces of furniture were the two identical leather chairs they sat in now. Harry found his remarkably uncomfortable. All that hinted even vaguely at mystery was the shut door in the wall beside the fireplace - but, judging by the rest of the atmosphere, he was willing to bet it was a supply closet.

"Really. I don't know _how_ many doves it kills every year." When the desk was clear, Malfoy set his wand carefully to one side and leaned back in his chair, looking down his nose at him from an impossibly arrogant slouch. "Why are you here, Potter?"

Harry met his gaze stubbornly, though he hadn't a clue how he was going to explain himself. He'd spent a long, cold morning – on his day off, no less - doing little more than pacing about the park trying to think of the right words, to no avail. He had managed only the flimsiest of excuses even to come at all – Malfoy would be an objective judge. _Malfoy smashes clean through ‘objective’ and comes out the other side, and you know it. You’re insane. Leave. Now._ "I've told you," he said, lamely, "I have a question for you."

"And my fee doesn't include Legilimency," Malfoy replied, with a sneering smile that was far too knowing. "So you'll have to ask it out loud."

Harry fixed him with a wary glare, gathering up his courage, since words seemed to be eluding him. Malfoy looked so very much the same - the unkind cast to his eyes, the slight twist in his sharp mouth, the crowing upward tilt of his chin - too much the same, in fact. The man he was looking at now might have been about to mock him for fainting, or for lying frozen with a bloody nose on the train. The hunched, anxious, disconnected boy whose path he had crossed in the final days of the war had disappeared, or gone to ground somewhere. The last he had seen of him had been the day that Lucius Malfoy had taken the stand in that dank courtroom, the day Draco had collapsed in the gallery (a little too spectacularly, he had thought at the time). The day Draco had given his first prophecy he had become a _story_ , and the old face had come again to stay.

And now it was gazing at him expectantly, making his mouth tighten in irritation the way it so often had at school, as he reluctantly began to speak. "I've been - having some bad luck, lately," he muttered.

"Oh - have you?" Malfoy's face was threatening to break out into a full-on smirk.

 _Wonderful._ Harry set his jaw and pushed on. "For the past few years. Yes." _This had better be worth it._ "With gi - with women."

Malfoy turned his face to the ceiling, folding his hands over his stomach. "I think I saw something about that in one of the papers," he said, with ill-concealed glee.

"You might have," Harry snapped. His face was burning. _In_ all _of them, more like._ It had begun a year or so after that final battle - a blow-up with Ginny that had ended in a pretty magnificent series of binges, on both sides, and some unfortunate pictures in some truly wretched tabloids. The next few years had been less sensational – the papers had stopped following him around pretty much altogether - but just as miserable. And a week ago his latest effort had melted away in the tepid sort of talk that had become so familiar, that ended in numb disappointment rather than tears. There had been heated arguments, to be sure, but they had been no more than smoke; the hearth had always been cold. He had begun to wonder some time before that if he wasn’t on the wrong track.

"I hear you had a good old knock-down drag-out a few weeks ago," Malfoy said, with relish. "Outside a restaurant. _Practically_ in an alley. What was it brought that on?"

"It’s not really any of your business." He could still feel the oppressive wave of shame that had overtaken him on the morning after. He thought he might rather join the bird entrails than explain it now. _The wrong track, indeed -_

"If you say so." He seemed to sober suddenly, shifting sideways in his chair and eying Harry with a tired sort of contempt. "I'm not some carnival fortune-teller, Potter. If you want someone to gaze into your eyes and tell you to follow your heart, you can go down the street to Lady Lovelorn's and get it for cheaper. Or free, from one of those busybody friends of yours -"

"I didn't come for your _advice_ , Malfoy. I'm not mental."

"Poor, pining Potter, wants to know why the girls don't seem to -"

"I don't give a damn about _why_ ," Harry growled at him through gritted teeth, barely keeping his temper. "I want to know _who_. Either I'll end up with someone, or I won't - fine. I'm tired of wasting my time. I want you to tell me who it is, and just - put an end to it." Even now he wasn't certain that was true. What if it turned out to be Ginny, or someone else he'd burnt his bridges with? What if it was no one? And if he was confirmed in the suspicion that whispered out at him from somewhere past the back of his mind that his ‘bad luck’ with women was not _completely_ a matter of - But, no. It was better to have the truth. Every time he broke off another boring, burdensome attachment, he felt as though he'd taken two giant steps backwards. He wanted to begin to move _on_.

Malfoy gripped the arms of his chair, and gave a shrug. "Who, then." He wore a bored expression as he brought the dry, smoking basin back to the desk with a muttered _accio_ , and it occurred to Harry to wonder if Malfoy actually enjoyed his trade. It was strange to imagine him enjoying anything outside of tripping up younger students in hallways.

"And I _don't_ want any of that cartomancy bullshit," Harry said as Malfoy drew a rectangular packet out of a desk drawer. But he only scoffed, and pulled several dry, brittle slips of parchment from it, tossing them easily into the basin.

"I don't deal in that sort of thing," he said haughtily, producing a small knife. "These are for burning - quite reliable when interpreted by someone with an actual gift, and suited to emotional inquiries. Now, I'll need a bit of you."

"A what?" Harry looked skeptically down at Malfoy's left hand, extended across the desk to him. In his right, he held a little knife at the ready.

"Blood is ideal -"

"What's your second choice?"

Malfoy looked disappointed. "Hair will do."

"Give it here, then."

Harry took the knife and tore off a small tuft of hair from the back of his head, and, at Malfoy's direction, dropped it in the basin. He put the blade aside (out of Malfoy's reach, entirely incidentally) and watched as he prodded at the papers with his wand until they began to fold and smoke.

"And now - Potter's true love," Malfoy said with a smirk. Harry rolled his eyes and turned slightly in his chair as his stomach gave a twist, but didn't correct him.

After a moment, the first small flames began to dart up between the papers. Malfoy looked attentive, if not particularly interested, as the fire grew, his eyes following the sooty black patterns that crept slowly across the smoldering parchment. The veil of smoke that rose between them was white and surprisingly thick, giving his pale face and hair a ghostly appearance, and swallowing the grey of his eyes until they seemed to dissolve into the fog. 

And then, his face unfocused. The studied quirk of his eyebrow slipped into a strange neutrality. His lips loosened, almost parted -

The change back was subtle, but undeniable. His nostrils flared, the fingers gripping his wand tightened, and his mouth pressed slowly back into a line. It was as though something inside of him were clamping down. When he raised his eyes to Harry once again, he had regained his businesslike demeanor.

"Sorry," he said without much sincerity, extinguishing the flames with a stream of water from his wand, and waving the last of the fumes impatiently away. "You know how it is - one needs a proper trance for this sort of thing, and they don't just come on demand. I've taken your reading, though, and I've got your question. I'll write you when I have an answer."

"- That's it? You're giving up?" Harry didn't know whether to feel relieved or angry. "It hasn't been half a minute!"

"I know you took Divination from an idiot obsessed with tea leaves, but even you must have noticed that it's not exactly arithmetic -"

"I _have_ seen real prophecies, thank you." He stood up out of his chair.

"Then you know they don't just _come_."

"I'm not paying you."

Malfoy sneered at him. "I'll send your bill with your answer. Don't worry."

Harry looked down at him, incredulous. "That's _it_?"

" _Goodbye_ , Potter." The door to the office flew open, letting in another bar of sunlight. Harry stormed out onto the tumbledown staircase leading to the street, angry and a bit stunned by the abrupt dismissal, and feeling more and more like Malfoy had just had some terrific fun at his expense.

\+ + +

Draco leapt to his feet the instant the door slammed shut. He glared down into the incomprehensible mess of ash and scraps that lay before him, willing it to speak to him again – it would not, and he grabbed the rim of the basin to give it a frustrated shake. It only burned his fingers, which he thrust into his mouth with a muffled curse. He spun around to face the fireplace, his shoulders hunched sullenly.

These flames too were silent, but he knew what he’d seen, and the images sprouted and unfurled again in his mind’s eye with every spark from the fire. It was impossible, but there was no mistaking it.

Potter’s eyes were closed. His glasses sat askew across his nose, threatening to slip away from his face altogether. Draco’s lips were locked over his, one hand tangled fiercely in his disheveled clothes – strange to see oneself from the side, like that. It was a flash, a fleeting half a moment, nothing more, but he could feel the heat of it and was overtaken by the familiar sensation of clutching something tightly to his middle, as though he would fall to his death if he were to let go.

He turned to his desk again with a sour sneer, and placed his hands flat on the surface as he stared across the room. His eyes took a long moment to adjust away from the phantom rings of orange and yellow. He felt as blank, as empty as the plain grey wall looking back at him. He realized that he didn’t really believe it. He had faith enough in his own abilities, but this … No, it could _not_ be true. It made no sense. It hadn’t been a proper trance. He would put it out of his mind for now, and carry on through the evening, and give the matter his attention later – when he could dedicate the full extent of his talent to the question. He did not believe it. 

The basin went back to the fire; he wiped his hands decisively on the shoulders of his jacket, slung over the back of his chair, and made ready for his next appointment. If he hadn’t been so very sure that he was too gifted to allow for such a thing, he might have suspected that Potter had come specifically to have a laugh at him.

Hours later, long after the sun had gone down, he shut himself in behind the door that stood beside the fireplace, climbed down a narrow staircase, and into the space that he had taken for his own.

There was a short, low hallway with an overburdened coat hook; then a cramped parlor, packed with an awkwardly large dining table, a stove, a hard sofa, and four battered chairs. The flat creaked on in a chain of dwindling rooms: his bedroom, spare and drab and a little rumpled, the bath, colder in winter than he could wish, and finally the windowless closet whose door always stuck, completely empty, bare of shelves, nothing but chipping plaster and faded, dusty floor boards. The previous tenant had probably kept towels there. Draco put it to better use.

He closed its door behind him and sank gratefully to the floor in the blackness. Even when he bent his knees his toes still wedged up against the far wall, nearly numb inside his shoes. He could feel the weight of the building pressing in around and over him – surrounded. Quiet.

What little he remembered from Trelawney’s lessons all had to do with being _open_ , with receiving, with lying in wait like some stupid gaping-mouthed fish for bits of truth to come floating by with the right current. But that was all exactly backwards. It was only by closing, by turning inward, by becoming blind and deaf and safe, that he ever found anything beyond mere hints of the future. It was only here, where his knees nearly bumped against his chest and there was nothing but what he brought in with him, that he could work himself loose enough to See.

He pushed his elbow into the wall impatiently. Most nights, it took about an hour to clear his mind sufficiently – most nights, he let his thoughts meander as they would, gaining and losing momentum until they had spun themselves out to a resting place, slowly shedding the day. 

Most nights, he hadn’t seen himself kissing Harry Potter. It was like trying to fall asleep with a bad itch. Every tribulation was magnified: the floor was unaccountably hard, his eyes burned with every slight uprising of dust, and his tie was loosened, tightened, loosened again, and finally thrust under the door, banished to lie beside the bathmat. He longed to see a clock. He _could not_ decide whether to get up and stop the drip in the faucet, or persevere in spite of it. He slumped against one wall in exhausted frustration, and then against the other. His restless fingers found little pits in the old, roughly used wood of the baseboard, and began counting them before he could stop them. One. Two. Three. Four. 

Twenty-five. Twenty-six.. Twenty-seven. Lost count; again. One. Two. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine.

There was a quiet blue light seeping in from his bedroom window, low and cool, draining the heat from him. The color was all flaking away – the flush in his face and chest, subsiding; the red tinge of Harry’s mouth fading into purple. Ribs and shoulders rose and fell untroubled. The curtains were damp, and moved, sluggish, across the floor in soggy fits and starts in front of the open window to the sound of slowing breathing. A hand came to rest at the sharp slope of skin where Harry’s throat met his jaw, and somehow all the angles seemed to align themselves into a firm, mathematical correctness.

Draco leaned his head back against the wall with a thud, and took in a deep, dusty breath. All the tension was gone; only his arm twitched, once, as though he meant to pull something to his chest. 

He stood and opened the door, stooping to collect his tie as he passed out of the bathroom, averting his eyes from the mirror that hung over the sink. When he stepped into the bedroom it was dead black.

_”Lumos.”_

The bed was unmade, one clean, uninviting crease disturbing the blankets. The light from his wand was dull and colorless. He wanted nothing more than to slip back into that blue – and green –

“Fuck.”

The word dropped uselessly out of his mouth, like a rock into a pond – it broke the silence and stirred up the surface of the vision, but could do no more than displace what he had seen for a moment or two. It all settled down again with the undeniable weight that such visions always had, leaving an impression as real and as confused in time as memory. He would share a bed with Harry Potter, and judging by the faint ache in his throat – he _wanted_ what he’d seen – he was supposed to be in love with him. It felt like fact.

Potter would be harder to convince, a good deal harder, not having had the benefit of his experience. 

_You cannot possibly be thinking of telling him._

… Well, no. Of course not. If he did tell him, he wouldn’t believe it, not for a second. He might get angry and turn him away – the thought sent up a little shoot of hope inside him. He might brush him off, dismiss it as a poor prank. He might laugh –

No. No, of course he couldn’t tell him. But these things came, whether you wanted them or not, like morning after night, whether you sought them out or hid from them or fought them away. Didn’t they?

He walked abruptly into the front room, full of lamplight and comfortably normal clutter. As he was pouring himself a glass of wine he let out a sharp, decidedly undignified snicker, nearly spilling on his shoes. He knew something Potter didn’t know, something big, something _important_ \- and it brought on a sense of triumph so utterly uncharitable that he knew at once it could not, in fact, be love. He sank onto the sofa and drank, feeling only relief. No, it wasn’t love. – How ridiculous. 

That made it much easier to dig in the slumping pile of papers under the side table and pull out a pad of stationery, to grab a pen and a pot of ink from a drawer and to set to writing out his answer. He knew exactly what to do: he would leap on his advantage. It was short work to go through his files and find a likely lover, a client who’d come to him last year in search of love and rather strange professional advice, whom he still remembered well: rather strikingly good-looking, and with just the right sob story – but prone, _oh_ so prone to chattiness, as boring as the day was long, and an utter sap to boot, disgustingly earnest. He was perfect. Potter would despise him. 

_And the first thing he’ll suspect, you know, is that you’re leading him on. He’ll be furious._

Well, naturally. What was the point of mocking someone, otherwise? Even better, he would likely be angry enough to come back and complain - yes, he would have to come back. And it would kill two birds with one stone, at that. He would have the pleasure of seeing Potter seething, and he would necessarily confirm that he was queer (another snicker – oh, _yes_ ), and so many glorious possibilities for what Draco could do with that knowledge kept running through his brain that he had to sit back and close his eyes for a few seconds before he could keep writing. 

As he sealed up the letter, he glanced at the base of the lamp on the table beside him, his flattened, gilded reflection smirking back at him. No – this was not something you did to someone you were meant to love. It was something you did to someone you were about to fuck _royally_. He laughed.

 

_Friday, January 18, 2002._

Harry stared into the slowly clearing mirror, wondering. The cold, dry air from the hallway breathed steadily in under the door, sweeping around the pile of discarded work clothes and chilling the tile under his feet. He shifted his weight uneasily, and pushed a tentative hand into his still-dripping hair. 

The letter sat on the kitchen table, pushed clumsily back into its envelope. No matter how long he stayed in the shower, no matter how many minutes he spent making sure he’d had the perfect shave … it would be there, its broken flap angled ominously towards the ceiling. Waiting. Just as it had been for the past three days.

 _He’s putting you on,_ he told himself, not for the first time. _Don’t be an idiot._

He sucked in a wet, unsatisfying lungful of air, opened the door, and half ran across the frigid hall to his bedroom, clutching the towel at his waist. He had been kicking himself for half a week, and saw no reason to stop as he stood in front of his closet, shoving aside a row of stiff-looking shirts. What on earth had possessed him to go to Malfoy? Of all the people who might have been allowed to discover this _rather_ sensitive piece of information, Malfoy was undoubtedly one of the worst. If this wasn’t just some joke, if he actually _knew_ , the consequences could become unpleasantly – public. _What did you think was going to happen? Idiot -_ He nearly crashed into a bookshelf as he was hopping into his jeans, and he made himself stand still, his T-shirt clutched in his hand and hanging at his side. There was a simple way around it all, as he had already decided. He tugged his shirt on, shoved his glasses into place, and marched almost fearlessly back to the kitchen. Half a sandwich remained on a plate beside the letter, a quick and not very appetizing attempt at dinner that had been abandoned when he had started to feel too restless to sit in the kitchen and try to ignore his correspondence. Now he picked it up again, sighing defeatedly when mayonnaise dribbled immediately onto his knee. He drew the letter out again as he ate.

_Potter,_

_Enclosed please find your bill, all charges due this 25th of January and subject to surcharge of fifty (50) percent if remitted after such date._

_I might have had an answer for you earlier if you had bothered to mention that you were a homosexual. I suppose you must find it embarrassing, but all the same I don’t appreciate being left to stumble across these things myself. I had something of a shock. You will note I’ve adjusted your invoice accordingly._

_You’ll find your man at the left end of the bar on the second level of that badly painted pub that sits at the corner of Woodridge and Bartlin, across from Bouleusis Books. I can’t remember the name, but it’s a dirty sort of gray. It is my understanding that he goes there after work every evening._

_Best of luck in your endeavors,_

_M._

Harry knew the one, at least from the outside. He had walked by it often, and on more than one occasion had noticed a crowd hanging about outside the door. It looked as though it was usually quite full, which put him somewhat at ease. He could step in, have a look – a casual drink, if he happened to be feeling daring – and it would become clear enough after a few minutes if he was being had. Wouldn’t it? Nothing to worry about. That was all he had to do. It would be stupid _not_ to do it, when the love of his life might be sitting in the –

_Don’t start with that._

He folded the letter, stuffed it under the plate, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and made himself leave his house before he could think it through any further, grabbing his coat on his way out the door.

His confidence began to fail when he came within a block of the place. As soon as it came into view, its bleak, peeling walls clashing sharply with the newer structures that seemed to shine out on either side of it, he nearly turned around where he stood. But he pressed on, even though his plan began to seem thinner and thinner with every step he took. Did he even have a plan? He should have spent a little more time concocting one; he _should_ have put on a different shirt. He preferred being cold to being overly warm, but his arms, bare under the lining of his coat, were shaking. He should absolutely go back home and find something more sensible to wear. 

_But why start being sensible now?_ he thought a little wearily as he edged through the group of ten or so who were standing with their drinks perched precariously on the exterior windowsills, to open the door. It must have been packed; no one would have braved the weather otherwise. Two rather drunken wizards were arguing about how best to throw up a guard against the wind, and looked set to do more damage than good if they ever got around to trying any wandwork. Harry slipped quickly into the mob inside.

It was blessedly dim. He only had to suffer a couple of incredulous stares as he crossed the room, and if anyone was commenting as he climbed the equally congested stairwell, he couldn’t hear it over the general racket. The upstairs room was smaller, but no quieter and no less stuffed with people. He was no longer worried about being underdressed, at least. It was uncomfortable enough in here that someone had taken the trouble to open a window that looked as though it had previously been painted shut.

Well. Here was the bar, mostly hidden behind the three or four layers of people hanging over it in an attempt to get the attendant’s attention. How the hell was he supposed to know who he was looking for, when the crowd seemed to have no beginning and no end? It would be impossible. He felt his hands unclench in his coat pockets, and realized he’d been gripping tightly at the wool. He felt he was in danger of grinning stupidly, and so he ducked his head. He could have a drink before he left – very much felt like having a drink, actually, before going home and chucking Malfoy’s daft excuse for a joke into the trash. When he had his face under control again, he began the slow slog up to the bar. By the time he broke through to the last two layers of drinkers, he had gravitated towards the left edge; there was a hard press of patrons behind him. The only way to move was forward.

His hand finally came down onto the bar as the large, square man who’d been standing in front of him stepped away with his beer – and there, not inches in front of his face, hunched over on a stool, his long legs drawn up uncomfortably to rest his feet on the metal rung that ran along the floor, with an unmistakable shock of white-blond hair, was –

 _Not_ Malfoy. The man turned to look behind him as Harry was jostled against his back, stiff with shock and outright bewilderment. His face was gentler, less angular, but the resemblance was a little eerie all the same - that is, until his face began falling quickly into an openly perplexed and apprehensive expression. It was so unlike anything he had ever seen cross Malfoy’s features that the likeness evaporated completely.

Harry realized that the reason for the man’s anxiety was that he was staring at him - glowering, more like. _Damn it._ He looked sharply up at the back of the bar, but of course it was too late; he’d offended him, and his muttered ‘sorry,’ completely lost in the jumble of voices pouring at them from every side, wasn’t going to cut it. He sighed.

“Sorry,” he said more clearly, practically into his ear. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Oh – it’s alright,” the man shouted back to him, relief mixing into the confusion that remained on his face. He gave a start as the bartender snatched his empty glass from his hands; as he was refilling it (and about seven others), Harry managed to elicit a curt nod form him that he supposed meant he would be served in his turn. 

“He’s a bit slow,” the man to his left said. He looked a little sheepish, as though talking to one’s neighbor at a bar was something to be apologized for. “But he’s really a very interesting man, if you come earlier. – When you can hear yourself think. Or on a Monday.”

“Yeah – thanks,” Harry said, as by some fantastic stroke of luck the stool immediately to his right was vacated. He snatched it up, grateful for the breathing room. “You know him, then?” He paused. “Do you come here very often?” 

“Every afternoon,” he said; and, when Harry began to stare at him again, hastened to add: “I run the bookshop just across the street. When we close up, I come over for a drink – or a few, if it’s a Friday.” 

Harry nodded, looking down to steady the glass that had just been shoved in his direction. This felt bizarre. He couldn’t think straight, which he blamed on the noise, and so the two thoughts running circles in his head kept overlapping and slipping past each other. _Did Malfoy put him up to this?_ The other was, of course, too outlandish even to entertain. He took a drink, and thought about standing up again. He really should go.

When he was about halfway through his beer, he saw the man leaning awkwardly over to him again out of the corner of his eye. He seemed to have conversations in lurching segments. “You don’t come here – I mean, I haven’t seen you, and I’d have noticed, since –“

“No, I’m not very close by.” He cut him off, never having been very fond of the words _you’re Harry Potter_. “Not usually. I was in the area.” _Brilliant._

“Of course, you’d be most of the way across town, wouldn’t you? I think what you’re doing is really great, you know –“

“Thanks.” He felt his shoulders slumping a little. Everyone said that, and always so reassuringly, as though to say he had nothing to fear from _them_ , no matter what anyone else might have thought. He truly didn’t like to talk about it outside of work. The people who understood, understood; the ones who didn’t spent a quarter of an hour backpedaling uselessly.

The man plunged onward: “- Because my brother’s in Azkaban, you see, and it really does help me sleep better, knowing someone’s looking out for him – well, for people _like_ him, anyway. I know he’s broken the law, and of course that’s where he belongs, and no one’s saying any different, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have some say. And I think it’s really great, the way you’ve gotten the Department to clean things up in there. – Really.” He dove into his beer, looking embarrassed.

Harry set his glass down, and hesitated. He turned on his stool to face him. “Do you want to get something to eat?” _Oh, don’t do this._

“The food here’s rubbish.” He gave another apologetic smile.

“Somewhere else, then. It’s a bit loud here.”

The man blinked, and his fingers began working nervously at the coaster that sat in front of him. When the initial wave of surprise had cleared his face, he gave Harry a strange, searching sort of look, directing his gaze into his eyes just a little too intensely. His mouth seemed unable to decide whether to smile. His whole posture was – fishing, Harry realized, fishing for some sign of confirmation. He swallowed.

“Alright. - I’m Jeremy.”

Harry nodded, and gave him a miserably awkward smile. “Do you know somewhere?”

“Oh, sure,” Jeremy said brightly. “I know all the places around here.”

\+ + +

Jeremy, as soon became excruciatingly clear, also knew everything there was to know about books. Not what was in them, so much – Harry might have been able to leap upon a topic of conversation they could both enjoy, had that been the case – but rather all of their external affairs, from binding to paper composition to typeface. And he was almost certainly the world’s foremost expert on incredibly complicated magical systems of their classification. For the first twenty minutes, Harry nodded along, pushing chips into his mouth with some pretense of attention.

“… And of course subject matter is really the ideal way to set it up, but it’s been very problematic in the past. There are primitive techniques that try to account for all the possible subjects and simply divide them into manageable subparts, so that one could locate a particular book just by using a deductive process – you start with very broad topics, I mean, and then work your way down logically until you’ve found the specific subject you’re looking for – but I think the problems with that are self-evident, aren’t they? You’d have to think of all the subjects from the start, or at least accept the proposition that any new topic that comes along will be able to fit somehow into the structure of categories you’ve created, and really, the human imagination has proven itself time and time again to be so terribly deficient …”

For someone who had seemed so timid, Harry thought, he really could go on. One invitation had been validation enough, apparently, to sweep away the shyness that had restricted him before (or was it the alcohol?). – It was possible that the evening might veer into more interesting territory, of course. He ordered another drink, and settled in.

“… So of course it makes more sense to instruct the books to line up according to mood, when you’re dealing with fiction. Emotions, at least, are fairly – I say _fairly_ \- consistent across time, in that a few thousand years back they had more or less the same ones we have now, and the only additions we’ve made have been purely a matter of vocabulary, and not of underlying fact. What the Romans called love we would certainly not call love, but because we needn’t use language, and because magical signals aren’t hampered by the same kinds of semantic difficulties, we’re not bound by our definitional differences. Of course, there are people who don’t believe you really _can_ reduce feelings across time to a set of single concepts …”

Harry found himself paying far too much attention to the way he was holding his glass, to the way he carried his shoulders, to keeping his feet planted firmly on the floor under the table. He felt like he was walking on a wire - that if he veered too far in one direction he would topple off. It was, he realized slowly, over the course of several minutes, because he was unsure of what he was doing at all. If this was a date – which he thought he’d meant it to be, or _something_ like that – it was the date from hell, and he recoiled at the thought of giving any physical signal that it should continue. If it wasn’t … then it was clear that there had been some miscommunication, because all the signals he was trying so hard not to broadcast were coming loud and clear from the man sitting across from him (when he stopped to take a breath, in any case). He began to grow a little resentful. Why walk this delicate line, at all? But after several attempts to break in and suggest that they get the check – that he needed to be up early – that it was getting very late – it became clear that Jeremy was completely unable to take a hint. It was all the more painful because he seemed so very well-intentioned. It wasn’t that he _wouldn’t_ understand; he simply _couldn’t_.

“… And that’s how we sorted out the biographies in the end, but I’ve never been quite satisfied with it, truth be told. It’s still impossible, for instance, to distinguish between memoirs of men who fought on the north as opposed to the east side of a particular battlefield, a distinction even some of the non-magical systems are obviously capable of if they’re organized the right way. But if you begin from a method of organization that simply takes no account of directionality, as this one obviously cannot, then you lose the ability to make what would otherwise be perfectly trivial sorting adjustments. I was so skeptical on that point, I admit, that I enlisted a little extra help to see if we would ever get it right. I went to see a Seer – Malfoy, the one with the shingle out by the coffee house that has those wonderful madeleines - and of course I had to pretend I wanted to ask about something more dramatic, but in the end I got a decent answer out of him about the _real_ question. We had a good conversation, I thought, though he can be very short. He practically tossed me out of his office, but he’s got a standing invitation to come have his pick of …”

 _It would be easier,_ Harry thought miserably, _if you_ were _Malfoy._ Then he could just have punched him in the face and gone home without a shred of remorse. It would all be easier, if there were no need for this depressing furtiveness. If he had had no reason to hide the fact that – yes, thank you, he thought he might like to try men for a while - he would not have been in this position in the first place.

 _Wait._ “- What?”

Jeremy stopped mid-sentence, and prepared to repeat himself; Harry interrupted again. 

“You said you went to see a Seer.”

“Yes, I did.” His face went suddenly red, and his mouth closed tightly for a moment. “But – of course, you know him, don’t you? I mean to say, you must hate him …” He trailed off, and Harry couldn’t let the opportunity pass, no matter how wretched he felt getting to his feet when doing so made Jeremy look like – well, like _that_. “I should have realized –“

“No – it isn’t that. I’ve got to go, that’s all. It’s late.” He probably sounded too brusque. He was angry. Of course Malfoy wouldn’t put someone up to something like this – no, that would be too much of a risk. It was so much easier to use someone who only had to be relied upon to be himself, someone who would serve your purposes without so much as being asked. Well, he’d chosen fantastically - and now they both had to suffer for his warped sense of humor. It made him furious.

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy was saying, all the nervousness weighing him down again, stunting his sentences. It was clear he was keenly regretting his misstep. “I really shouldn’t have said anything.”

 _Merlin, no._ Harry tried to give him a smile, but his face felt hard. “It’s alright,” he said, unconvincingly, as he gathered his coat off the back of his chair. And after a few more ineffectual assurances, he plunged out into the busy street, hating himself a little.

It was well after ten, but he made straight for Malfoy’s office, somehow certain in his addled state that he might still catch him there. If there was any justice in the world, he would find him, and make him account for being such an evil little _shit_. He stomped up the wooden staircase to the door that bore his name, looked contemptuously at the impressively polished brass knocker that sat below the pretentious little plaque, and hammered at the wood with his fist. 

No answer.

He tried again, and again – until his hand, already numb from the cold, began to tingle and ache. It was only then that he realized that of course he’d have gone home for the night; and furthermore, that he had no idea where Malfoy slept. And that he was probably going to start drawing unwanted attention to himself, if he kept standing here pounding away at the door of an office building at ten-thirty on a Friday. He spun on his heel with a curse, and slunk down the stairs again, determined to walk back to his house, though it was hardly close. He felt the need to do something – if he couldn’t do it to Malfoy, he could at least take it out on the pavement. He turned into an alley, looking up at the thin strip of sky visible between the walls, and shoved his way past a pair of curtains whipping furiously out an open window to turn onto the street and start for home.

 

_Saturday, January 19th, 2002._

The drawing room had been put back to rights only recently. Draco sat in an armchair that he had angled away from the fireplace, looking out onto the front gardens through the bank of windows whose thick, small panes seemed to shiver in the unsteady candlelight. The furniture had all been switched out. There were faded patches on the walls where portraits shredded by flying shards of crystal had been removed. The chandelier itself had been beyond repair, and now in its place there hung a more staid, less fragile wrought iron construction that occasionally dripped wax. The floor, however, was spotless. Some things about his home would never change.

The morning he had sent Potter his letter, he had begun to doubt his decision. Did he truly want him plowing into his office in a rage? An unease had settled over him, one he didn’t care to study closely enough to identify properly. When he’d had no response that night, the feeling had intensified. And after another full day of vainly awaiting a reply, the suspicion that he had made a grave miscalculation had become nearly overpowering. It was possible, he had admitted to himself, that what he wanted was _not_ what he had set out to achieve. Rather than go through the motions of another day at work – and that was all he would have been capable of, with Potter weighing so heavily on his mind – he had cancelled his appointments, packed a bag, and come home to avoid his mail. 

There was more to being here than just delaying whatever unpleasantness awaited him back in London, of course. This should have been the natural place for him to come when he had questions: this was the room where his gift had first revealed itself, though he hadn’t known it for what it was at the time, and if he needed to make sense of things, why not come back to the beginning, start afresh and try to trudge through it all once more, step by step? It was essential to keep things clearly ordered, when one’s day to day business took one forward and backwards in random skips and jumps through time. Though he himself, of course, had never left the present, he often became confused about precisely what was true when. It helped to take notes, _copious_ notes, to keep for reference. 

He struggled now with something less conducive to methodical solutions, however. _Is it inevitable?_

He had always thought that what he saw would come to pass, in one way or another. He’d had clients who had expended no small amount of effort on preventative measures, only to find that they had paved the way for the very future they had sought to escape. He had no doubt it was a story as old as prophecy itself. But would the same be true for him? He had never seen himself before; did he have some power others lacked, to twist fate away from its path, like diverting a vine on a trellis, nudging it aside an inch or two onto a parallel course? What was the extent of the magic he possessed?

He had felt himself before, once. He hardly counted it among his proper visions, because it had been his first, and so transient and accidental that he had misinterpreted it for months. In many ways it had been like the first time he’d shown his magic as a child – brought on by intense emotion coupled with a lack of control. He had been standing just there, in the corner where a miniature fig tree grew now in a heavy stone pot. His body had been trying to take him out of the room for minutes that had seemed like hours; he remembered the peculiarly loud squeaking noises his shoes had made as he jerked closer and closer to the door at the sound of every scream. Once his hand had landed on the doorframe, ready to propel him out into the hall.

 _“Stay,”_ the Dark Lord had said, and he had stayed, unable to shut his eyes against the blurred, dark shape of his father contorting on the rumpled carpet. He had wanted so badly not to see, and not to hear. The deep, soft sound of his mother’s stifled weeping had seemed as though it would surely drive him mad. Finally he had turned his head just enough to stare into the fireplace instead, wondering if perhaps it was possible to blind oneself that way, like looking directly into the sun. If he had to stay, he would be blind and deaf, and then he would be safe. There would be nothing, no one but him. The fire had surrounded him, leaping up threateningly on either side, curving over and under him with blasts of heat so intense he thought his skin would crack, but in the middle of that wild burn he had been safe, clinging to something sound and sure. When he had come back to his corner, the Dark Lord was gone.

He hadn’t known what it meant or even what it was until he had felt it again, in the Room of Requirement. The incident in the courtroom, not long after, had confirmed that he was capable of more conventional predictions. His father had been dreadfully pleased that his trial had been interrupted by a Malfoy supplying the means to save twenty hapless Muggle school children from a falling roof, but Draco had found it more than a little embarrassing. Soon a bit of practice and study had taught him that he needn’t wait for unbearable stress to trigger his visions, and, happily, that he needn’t faint in public.

(That, incidentally, had been the last time either of his parents had been glad of his talent. When the acquittals had come in and the publicity had died down somewhat, they’d been horrified to learn that he intended to continue dabbling in Divination - and on a commercial basis, no less. His father had first tried pointing out gently that the family had gold enough, then bluntly stating that no Malfoy would ever go into _business_ so long as he was alive, and finally threatening to disown him if he kept insisting on ruining the family name by advertising himself in a public street. Cooler heads had prevailed in the end, but to this day they never spoke of it when he came to dinner.) 

Now, having watched countless clients struggle with the knowledge of their unchangeable future, he had come to the tentative decision that there were thousands upon thousands of paths leading to and away from every fixed moment in time. He was aware that it was an impossible theory, a paradox (he _hated_ paradoxes), since every moment was presumably capable of capture in a vision if the right question were asked and the right reading taken, and there was therefore precisely one path to every end, and the only variable was a lack of information. What happened before and after something he had seen remained unknown to him, but it was set in stone somewhere, known to something. 

… Or maybe that was all garbage. He didn’t know. Wading through it made him feel stupid and irritated.

 _Start again, Malfoy._ He would share a bed with Harry Potter. That much he was sure of. Nothing he had actually seen had ever failed to occur. And he wanted to go to bed with him, without question. That, he had felt in his own flesh. 

In his rush to deny the rest of the feeling, however – in his foolish, knee-jerk attempt to dismiss the fact that the question underlying this particular revelation had been Potter’s _who_ \- had he somehow changed the path that time took away from that moment when they lay beside one another? Was that possible? Had he gutted it of the meaning it was meant to have, and left only the shell, the sex? Did he have that power?

_Do I want it?_

Draco didn’t know what he wanted, or what he’d gotten himself. He wondered if he might have done better to try to bring Potter to it slowly, to help him see the truth more carefully rather than trying to induce him to return in the heat of anger. He didn’t even know _when_ any of it would happen, and that was the worst of all. The waiting was what drove his clients to struggle uselessly against the inevitable. How could one sit by and do nothing? He understood why Trelawney drank, he thought. Maybe she wasn’t a complete fool, after all.

Deciding that stewing in his own tangled thoughts was proving less than helpful, Draco stood abruptly, and climbed the stairs to his room to repack his bag. Perhaps he would ask her.

 

_Sunday, January 20th, 2002._

The Three Broomsticks hadn’t changed at all. Neither had Professor Trelawney, except that she seemed to have upgraded to cherry brandy. She held herself ridiculously straight, as though intent upon looking _down_ at everything through her gigantic glasses. Draco sat up every so slightly, pulling his chair primly closer to the table.

“I confess myself surprised,” she drawled, setting her glass on the table with a firm clink, “Yes, _quite_ surprised to find that you are – forgive me – still in business.” She let the last word slide out of her mouth like something distasteful, rather the way his father did. “Some students lack talent, Mr. Malfoy, but you were devoid even of the barest hint of respect for the art that I practice.”

 _That we practice, you bug-eyed hag,_ Draco thought, staring directly into her rapidly blinking eyes. “I never paid very much attention, no,” he admitted with a shrug. “I seem to get on alright.”

Trelawney ignored the slight, if she felt it at all. “Yes, so many of my less fortunate colleagues have been forced to ‘get on’ – as you say – by peddling quick and inexpensive ‘readings’ to anyone who will have their services. I myself have always found more satisfaction in refining my Sight than in training it on every day matters such as whether and to what extent one will succeed in pecuniary –“

“We haven’t all got towers,” Draco interrupted, forcing himself to stop swirling his wine. He didn’t feel at all like drinking it.

“No, no, sadly not,” she agreed, softening slightly. “Sadly not.”

He steeled himself. “I’ve come to - ask you a question.”

She took a deep, gratified breath, and raised her hands in a joyful sort of gesture; she might have been welcoming home a prodigal child. Her smile was unbearably indulgent, and she let her posture slacken, crossing her arms on the table, as though sinking to his level. “Of course, of _course_ , my dear.”

“If I’ve – Seen something,” Draco began carefully, knowing full well it would be harder to put this into words than to ruminate on it in his own disordered mind, “Is it – fated? I know it will happen, of course, but is it possible to change its meaning?” He was struggling. “Is it possible to – to change the question behind the answer?”

Trelawney looked at him, saying nothing. Draco wondered if she had understood at all – he wouldn’t have blamed her if she hadn’t – and was about to try anew when she let out a sigh so deep and so abrupt he nearly jumped out of his chair. She hung her head.

“It is as I suspected – feared,” she said slowly, clearly relishing each word. “You are too grounded in this world, my dear. You surround yourself with the trifling and the mundane, and you are fettered by it, absolutely blinded. You have become so weighted down by all of the unimportant trials that your – did you call them your clients? – heap upon you that you have succumbed to the greatest folly that any Seer can, indeed the mistake that almost all laypeople make when they try to comprehend the art. You have forgotten, or you have failed to see, that there is no _purpose_ to Divination. There is no tinkering. There is no Seeing _because_ , or _for_ , or _to do_. You are the Eye, not the hands. You See, you do not act. Knowing is the object, and the only object. Changing anything is entirely, entirely beside the point.”

“Maybe it’s beside the point,” Draco said, becoming increasingly annoyed. “But is it possible?”

“Your questions lead me to the conclusion that you lack the objectivity necessary for a successful career in Divination,” she said, as blank and settled as a wall. “Yes, you are incapable of the proper distance.”

“I only want to know –“

“My dear boy, I advise you to let go, if you can. I see no hope for you if you continue to treat the art as a means to an end. Scheming has no place at all in the exercise of our gift. I realize that it will be difficult for you to leave behind something so firmly ingrained in your person, but if you ever hope to succeed in your endeavors you must have one foot in the stream, you must be open to the fluidity of Time and Truth. Yes, you must give up this desire to control. I should think you would know, you of all people, that scheming will only come to a bad end; your father mired himself in it, and I think it ought to be very clear –“

Draco shot to his feet and shoved the table to one side, spilling wine and brandy and glass onto the floor, and left.

 

_Monday, January 21st, 2002._

Harry rarely left the office before seven. Today, however, he made his escape the moment it stopped raining, slipping out at just past three o’clock – a sleeve of papers under his arm in concession to the towering mess of work that remained to be done – determined to catch Malfoy during business hours. He’d been by twice over the weekend, just in case, but without success. 

He was running out of steam, by now. The fury that had risen up in him on Friday night had cooled only slightly by Saturday morning, when he had marched over with an impressive speech prepared. He’d tried again that afternoon, having toned down his remarks a touch with an aim to keeping the moral high ground. That night he had hit an unexpected stumbling block when he’d awoken around two in the morning to the realization that he had been _dreaming_ about him, and – not in a way that he felt would be productive to recall at the moment, really. He shrugged his shoulders roughly as he crossed the street, trying to loosen the layers of coat and collar that were suddenly a little too oppressive. Sunday he had stayed at home, after convincing himself that it would be fruitless to try again until the week began.

He wasn’t surprised that he’d dreamt about him, really. In the past week he had thought more about Malfoy than he probably had in his entire life put together. It was only natural that it should become something like a fever, an obsession that festered in his unconscious until it manifested in strange, unfathomable ways. It wouldn’t break, try as he might to distract himself. It was giving rise to some truly troubling misgivings as it simmered within him, strengthening and changing with every hour that passed. Maybe, he put forth to himself hesitantly, it was for the best that he hadn’t seen Malfoy that Friday. Maybe he had been too quick to judge. Maybe – and it was a stretch, but _maybe_ \- Malfoy had simply been … confused. Harry admittedly knew nothing of trances and visions and that sort of thing; he didn’t know the degree of precision with which a Seer might be able to pin down a particular answer. The only genuine example of Divination he had ever seen, as far as he knew, was Trelawney’s slack-jawed, otherworldly channeling, and that couldn’t be the standard, could it? 

And when he wasn’t talking, or smiling, or – or looking right at him, Jeremy had looked an _awful_ lot like him. Sort of. Could Malfoy simply have assumed that he had seen him, when in fact he had seen something – someone - else? Was that how it worked?

It made sense, in a way. As reluctant as he was to give Malfoy the benefit of the doubt, he knew _he_ would never have believed his own eyes (brain?) if he had seen himself and Malfoy _together_.

 _But you just have,_ he reminded himself helpfully, _On Saturday night, when you saw him – very clearly – staring up at you as he dragged his tongue perfectly maddeningly slowly up along your –_

Harry ran straight into a witch looking dumbfoundedly at an Underground map, and apologized profusely as he bent to pick it up for her, soggy though it was, from the slick curbstone. He must have been beet red, because she seemed just as alarmed and contrite as he was. He hurried onward.

It didn’t matter, anyway; it was a ridiculous idea. _If only you had been there on Friday, I could have spent my weekend thinking about something aside from whether you’re actually a complete git. I_ know _you are. You did it to fuck with me, and you dragged a perfectly innocent, pitifully boring bystander into it with no regard for anyone’s feelings. And if you had just been in your office, I could have told you so and gone to bed a happy man. But, no – you had something better to do, and I’m the one who’s paying for it._

And apostrophizing, at that. He needed to get Malfoy off his chest, and soon.

He was nearing the now-familiar row of old terraced houses that was home to Malfoy’s office. He leapt over a sizable puddle to cross to the right side of the street.

Then he saw him – walking out of the adjacent coffee shop that stuck out squat on the corner, a small paper package in his hand, munching on a madeleine with an absent, mildly cross expression. Before Harry could call his name, another man exiting the shop swept by Malfoy in a rush, knocking heedlessly into his shoulder as he passed, tipping him off balance. Harry watched him sway and wave one arm into the air to steady himself – it only took half a second – watched as he nearly dropped his package, tottered forward to catch it – and saved it from dropping to the ground only by overstepping the pavement and landing one foot ankle-deep in the streaming gutter with a muddy splash. Malfoy stared down into the water, outrage writing itself sharply across his features. He turned immediately pink, and let out a viciously disproportionate curse at considerable volume.

 _Hah._ “Malfoy!”

His head snapped up. Harry watched his face as he advanced towards him, wanting to catch any hint of guilt (or, more likely, smugness) that might betray him. What he saw was unexpected, and somehow less satisfying: a trace of fear, a furrowed brow, and then nothing but blank vexation as he pulled his soaking shoe up out of the water.

“What do you want?” 

He had forgotten, somehow, how much _nerve_ he had. To pretend he had no idea why he was there - _unless he’s not pretending -_

“We need to talk,” he said, clipping his words with an agitation that was due more to uncertainty than to true anger. No need to let Malfoy know that. “Now.” He walked by him, heading up the stairs to his office without waiting for an invitation.

“Fine,” came the muttered reply, close behind him. “We can do it while I’m changing my socks. Did you see that -?”

“Shut up.” He tried the door; it opened for him, and he stalked in to stand impatiently beside the desk, desperately trying to remember what he had planned to say to him.

Malfoy shut the door, and stooped to pick up a small travel bag that sat just inside. He walked over to the door beside the fireplace, threw it open, and started down a staircase.

Harry stared after him. “Malfoy –“

“Come on, then!” he called back testily, his uneven footfalls echoing up in his wake. “I won’t have you sitting up there by yourself. You’ll probably touch something.”

Harry followed, pulling out his wand. When he came to the landing he found himself in a low-ceilinged foyer, next to a rack hung all over with rather expensive coats. He stepped into the widening room, and quickly tucked his wand away again. “You _live_ here? – Where have you been?” Malfoy was dropping his bag on a table that was situated too close to the stove.

“I’ve been away on business. Not all of us are chained to an office stool, you know.” He pushed past Harry without looking at him, opening another door even as he was reaching down to slide off his remaining shoe. He disappeared into what Harry supposed was his bedroom. “I get called away fairly frequently, in fact. I suppose you won’t believe it, but as it happens I have – oh, for fuck’s sake!”

Harry stuck his head in, and saw Malfoy fuming over a pool of water that had collected on his floor directly in front of a wide-open window. The curtains were saturated, and a pile of dirty clothes that sat nearby was slowly soaking up the excess. “Left in a hurry, did you?” 

Malfoy kept his back to him for a moment longer, tugging at the curtains as though not quite certain what he ought to do with them. When he turned around again, he looked – inscrutable. He face was carefully fixed, and nothing in the way he held himself spoke of irritation. He kept his eyes trained somewhere in the vicinity of Harry’s tie. _What the hell is going on?_

“Well? What is it you want to talk about?”

“I –“ Harry made a snap decision to lie. Something here was out of place, something was being hidden; he couldn’t put his finger on it, and he didn’t like feeling that Malfoy knew more than he did. “- Your rate’s too bloody high. I’ll give you half; I’ve only slept with him once. I won’t owe you _that_ much for a while.”

All he had wanted was _some_ reaction, something to read. He wasn’t disappointed. Malfoy’s eyes flashed up to meet his, and his mouth loosened in undisguised surprise. He stared. Harry looked obstinately back, though with each passing second he became more anxious – he had never been especially good at lying under direct examination –

Malfoy found his voice before he was required to say anything, however. He pretty well erupted with incredulity. “You slept with _him?_ ”

“That – was sort of the point, wasn’t it?” Harry didn’t know what he’d expected. Laughter, perhaps, if Malfoy had really meant to set him up. A shrug, a smirk, if he’d been honest all along. Disbelief seemed entirely out of place – as did anger, which seemed to be following close on its heels.

“I _cannot_ believe –“ Malfoy whirled around, thrusting the curtains aside to begin digging savagely through a dresser drawer that Harry could only suppose contained socks. “I mean, of all the ludicrous – do you have _any_ taste at all?”

“Hang on,” Harry said, quite unjustifiably stung. “You’re the one who shoved him my way, aren’t you? What right do you have to – why does it matter to you, anyway?” Any advantage he had gained from the element of surprise was long spent. He was floundering now. “It’s only because of you that I ever met him at all –“

“You don’t understand the first thing about what I do!” Malfoy turned and whipped a pair of socks at him. It was a testament to the plain rage on his face that Harry didn’t even think of laughing as they bounced harmlessly off his chest and into the rainwater. “Don’t you dare tell me what I’m responsible for when you can’t possibly comprehend –“

“So explain!” He hadn’t come here to be lectured, and he was still utterly bemused by Malfoy’s sudden fit of wrath. “Show me what it is that I’m supposed to know. You’re acting like a lunatic. Just tell me what you saw – heard, whatever the hell happens to you when you – read people. Answer questions.” He saw him hesitate, and felt a renewed surge of frustration. “Stop your fucking scheming for once, and give me a straight –“ 

_Answer._ Malfoy’s lips crashed up against his mouth, as hard and cold as metal for an instant, and then abruptly, shockingly warm. He had to catch himself on the wall as a hand curled into a knot where his scarf was hanging loose around his throat. His glasses were knocked clear off on one side, hanging from one ear. He opened his mouth to protest, but no words would form; there was no room for anything beyond Malfoy’s tongue sliding hot against his own, his teeth scraping urgently against his lips. He felt his coat sliding off one shoulder, and the hard flat of Malfoy’s chest wrinkling his shirt up against his skin. 

He couldn’t tell how long the blank lasted – minutes, maybe. Long enough that at the end of it, when he finally found something to say, he had to catch his breath to do so.

“… That’s what you saw?”

Malfoy nodded, apparently too distracted by the puzzle Harry’s tie was presenting to bother looking him in the face. Harry grabbed at his wrists to try to command his attention. “Wait a minute –“

Malfoy grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands, and slammed him back against the wall. “Shut up,” he growled. “I’m not done showing you.”

\+ + +

He sat up, his ribs still heaving, and let the blanket pool around his waist. He thought about going to close the window. The curtains were still slipping from side to side in the shallow puddle on the floor, and the air coming in from the alley was frigid. He looked down at Harry. His skin was tight with cold under its quickly cooling film of sweat, and something in his neck twitched when Draco laid his hand on his jaw, watching his chest as it rose and fell with mesmerizing constancy. His lips were reddened, swollen, fading into a deep purple in the lessening light. One knee jutted up out of the sheets, trailing off into his thigh at a perfect, smooth slant. … Well, smooth but for the somewhat baffling bite marks that were just now cropping up like shadows on his skin, but –

“Close the fucking window, Malfoy.”

Draco smiled down at him. “No.” He let himself slide down under the blanket again, resting his icy fingers on Harry’s hip, and taking a secret delight – a very small, foolish, misguided sort of pleasure – in thinking that this was not something you did to someone you loved. Almost certainly not.

Potter lay staring at the ceiling, looking strange and somehow older without his glasses. 

“You saw – us,” he said, with hardly any question left in his voice. Draco nodded when he glanced in his direction. “And you _didn’t_ see him.”

“Him –“ It took him a moment to remember there was anyone at all outside his bedroom that he should know about at all, and he didn’t quite catch himself in time. “Oh. It’s not a – that is, no science is exact, you know, and it’s not so uncommon to have a sort of mix-up if –“

“You’re a prat, Malfoy.”

“Well,” Draco sniffed, rolling onto his side to lean out of bed and rescue his trousers from the water that rippled and crept closer to the bed frame with every gust of wind. “You’ll get used to it, I suppose.”

Potter was silent. When Draco turned to him again, he was still staring upwards. He wondered how much he could actually see, eyes unaided.

“You lied once.” His brow furrowed, and Draco knew exactly what he was thinking: _once this week, anyway._ “I don’t see why I should believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter if you do.” Something inside him still rebelled against that, perhaps only out of pride. If he hadn’t lied, if he hadn’t taken every step that had led him here – would it have mattered? _Could_ he have done anything else? “These things happen, whether you like them or not. You have nothing to say about it.” He could tell by the look on Potter’s face that as a matter of principle he liked it just about as much as Draco did. To be bound to one path, swept helplessly along by some constant and unfeeling force, was vaguely insulting. They both lay still for a while. After a few minutes, Harry’s eyes lowered to the foot of the bed, falling fast out of sight in the growing dark.

“Maybe,” was all he said.


End file.
